The Basement: Donald Hoffman | Consciousness, Math, and the Case for Letting Go

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AJ Gentile (0:14)

Unbelievable.

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AJ Gentile (1:00)

Today I'm talking with Donald Hoffman. Don is a cognitive scientist who spent decades at the heart of mainstream science. He wrote fighter jet software for Hughes Aircraft and Pure Machine Code. He trained at MIT. He sat for years in a private consciousness club that Francis Crick co-founded. Francis Crick, the guy who discovered the building blocks of life.

I discovered you can't return underwear or target.

SPEAKER_5 (1:24)

Both took real courage.

AJ Gentile (1:26)

Then, his own math convinced him that we have never once seen reality as it is. He seems very calm about it. Today, we're covering the beetle that fell in love with a beer bottle and why that matters for evolution.

SPEAKER_6 (1:38)

A beetle dated a beer bottle, huh?

AJ Gentile (1:41)

Eh, not that worse. Why Don says space and time are a headset we're wearing and what that means for UAPs and the entities people meet on DMT. Near the end, Don tells a story that he's never told before. It's about the night he texted his wife goodbye from a hospital bed. You might know that part, but you don't know the rest.

Okay, no notes in that one. That one's real. Once we wrap up, I'll come back and break down the conversation, which is not going to be easy, but I'll be here. Let's go down to the basement.

Professor, thanks for doing this. I appreciate you.

Donald Hoffman (2:22)

Thanks a lot, AJ.

AJ Gentile (2:24)

Um, first thing that kind of was I found interesting about your background is you grew up in San Antonio, spent most of your life in Southern California. Where did you start ice skating? How did that even, how does that part of your resume?

Donald Hoffman (2:41)

I think that that started when I was about 12 or 13, and we saw maybe an icecapades chalet, an icecapades show or something like that.

And my parents liked it, we liked it, and they decided to try ice skating. I was 12 or 13, my brother was a year younger, my sister was four years younger. So we went out there. I didn't like it at first because you just fall down. You get out there, you try stuff. Everything that you try to do is just wrong. All your normal reactions are wrong. So I fell, fell, fell, and I basically didn't want to do it. And they sort of forced us to do it for several weeks.

And then all of a sudden, one day, it clicks. You realize you don't walk like you normally walk, heel, toe, heel, toe. You push with the side and you glide. And when you really discover that for yourself, it opens up a whole new world. And once you then enter that world, then it's fun to glide. And eventually I got to the point where I could do a double toe loop and an axle jump and so forth. So I actually did a double jump and a one and a half turn jump and so forth. So it was a blast and it's a very, very good exercise. And even now, I'll go back and ice skate.

AJ Gentile (3:54)

Really?

Donald Hoffman (3:54)

I'm not doing double jumps, but I'm 70, so it's not smart. But if I'm careful and just stroke and glide on the ice, it's good exercise.

AJ Gentile (4:05)

I thought it was great. OK, so ice capades, not hockey. That's fine.

Donald Hoffman (4:09)

Right. Yeah, it wasn't hockey.

And so I did figure skating and all of us did figure skating. I've never actually been on hockey skates.

AJ Gentile (4:17)

Wow. I'm picturing you in the whole Lycra outfit.

AJ Gentile (4:20)

You look great, by the way.

AJ Gentile (4:22)

Um, so dad was a fundamentalist preacher.